Legacy media companies are bloated with high costs and outdated revenue models. The opportunity now lies with lean, creator-led brands that operate with low overhead and leverage built-in distribution to niche audiences. These new media businesses can be highly profitable, with small teams pocketing seven figures.

Tubi's CEO argues that the media industry's focus on consolidation misses the bigger story. The more profound shift is the convergence of the creator economy and traditional Hollywood, which is fundamentally changing how content is made, distributed, and consumed by the next generation of viewers.

The strict separation between editorial and business prevents legacy media from monetizing massive digital audiences effectively. Unlike creators, they fail to leverage on-air talent for direct revenue streams like sponsorships or merch, leaving significant money on the table.

The creator tech market has historically been split, with platforms built either for creators (e.g., LTK) or for brands. The key opportunity lies in the middle: creating solutions that brands own and control, but are fundamentally designed to serve creators' needs.

Independent creators with expensive video productions can solve the YouTube monetization gap by partnering with legacy media like NBC. This provides a crucial revenue stream while syndicating content to a different, often older, mainstream audience.

Traditional media companies are turning to successful YouTube creators to source proven concepts and talent. They offer upfront capital to scale existing YouTube IP into larger productions, creating a symbiotic relationship between once-separate platforms.

Netflix's entry into vertical video is a strategic move to unlock the value of its deep, underutilized content library. By allowing creators to remix its proprietary, long-tail content, Netflix can create a powerful marketing flywheel and a differentiated short-form product that isn't reliant on typical user-generated content.

With consumer media consumption shifting rapidly into short, clipped formats on platforms like YouTube, streaming services are missing consumer attention by hoarding their libraries. Galloway suggests streamers open up low-engagement back catalogs to external creators to slice, remix, and distribute in short two-to-ten-minute snippets, effectively creating community-driven marketing pipelines without incurring massive incremental production overhead.

Instead of a costly acquisition like Warner Bros. Discovery, a streamer like Netflix could achieve similar goals—acquiring IP, back catalogs, and cultural relevance—more efficiently. Investing that capital to exclusively sign the top 100 creators is a more agile, high-return strategy.